SECOND-PLACE RANKING

The nine second-place teams from each group are ranked by points, but with the results of their games against the sixth-placed team in their group discarded.

Those points don't count because there were initially two groups of five teams until Kosovo and Gibraltar were admitted to UEFA. UEFA subsequently decided not to change the rules despite the fact that the groups are now balanced.

The best eight teams on that basis will be drawn - based on seeding - into four two-legged, home-and-away play-off ties, with the ninth team eliminated.

The seeding will be based on the next update to the FIFA world rankings, which will make Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and Croatia the seeded teams and Sweden, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Greece the unseeded teams.